Dempster hadn’t returned the five ampoules out of the goodness of his heart, either. It was to keep her functioning while she did his bidding. He’d promised to help her find a suitable doctor. Jesus Christ, she came so cheap.
Something chirruped. It took her a moment to realise it was an alert signal on her new mobile. She fished it out of her pocket with numb fingers. It was a text from Delroy, one of the few people who had her new number. It was the first time she’d heard from him since she was suspended. The message was stark: ‘JC = discip inq.’ It meant Coulthard was going to run her discipline inquiry. Surely things couldn’t get any worse. She made for the nearest pub.
The Grapes claimed to be the oldest hostelry in London. It was a crowded field. Berlin sat nursing a double and reflected on Coulthards role in her demise. He’d had her fooled at first, but after he’d dropped her in the shit once too often, the big smile and the ‘sorry about that, mate, nothing personal’ failed to convince.
Coulthard had a problem with people who didn’t listen to his war stories. And with anyone who had a better idea. When Berlin first started in the job she’d had a lot of better ideas. Like, how they could work legally. She soon learnt that these initiatives did not sit well with Coulthard’s predilection for the ‘tricks of the trade’.
But instead of keeping to the moral high ground, she had joined Coulthard in a race to the bottom. Meeting an informant alone was verboten. There were too many risks. Informants were usually borrowers in trouble, and loan sharks frequently had people watching defaulters to make sure they didn’t do a runner. Or go to the police. Not that this was very likely.
The police weren’t interested in loan shark victims until they actually suffered violence, after which it was too late. Berlin had known police officers to send away victims who reported threats by moneylenders with the advice that debt was a civil matter.
Coulthard manipulated Nestor, who was supposed to be in charge, by relieving him of operational decisions. Nestor couldn’t make a decision if his life depended on it, preferring to write memos and fire off emails. So had he really made the call to close the Doyle file? Or was Coulthard behind it? It had his paw prints all over it, but it would be difficult to determine if it was just to get at her, or if he’d had other motives.
If she’d had the support of a team maybe it would have been different. But she was not a team player. At least that was one thing she and Coulthard could agree on.
She swallowed her self-disgust with the dregs of her whisky and went home for something stronger.
22
NESTOR AT HOME was a very different creature from Nestor at the Agency. Chez Nestor, he had aspirations to be the suave, witty bon vivant: a man at ease at table. A raconteur, even. This fantasy had now fled, along with most of his other delusions. He was drinking in his cellar among a collection of vintage burgundy that was probably his last remaining asset.
He could hear his wife upstairs, clattering her French copper-bottomed pans about in her designer kitchen. She would make him eat something unspeakable, a dribble of brightly coloured jus on an enormous white plate topped with a sliver of braised celeriac and a niggardly dressed chop. Appearances were everything to her. She knew he would give his right arm for a steak and kidney pie.
Women could be so cruel.
His own mother, a leggy debutante in her day, had laughed at him and told him he was a chinless wonder and it was lucky his rugger bugger of a father hadn’t lived to see how his pusillanimous son had turned out.
Good God.
Now he was in the wilderness. The wine was his pride and joy. He preferred the full, harmonious reds to the complex whites, seeking in the bottle what he couldn’t find in life. But he rarely drank it. Possession gave him pleasure, and anticipation. Deferred gratification was the hallmark of his existence.
Well, those days were over. He pulled the cork on a 1999 Comte Georges de Vogüé Musigny and, with reverence, wafted it under his nose. Heaven.
Halfway through the bottle it occurred to Nestor to check his mobile, just in case the bastard had returned his calls. He imagined that all over London, all over the globe for that matter, hedge-fund managers and investment bankers were ducking calls from their clients. No doubt many of them had disconnected their phones, or been cut off by now. But he suspected that this bastard had more reason to duck than most.
Nestor had committed his pension fund, the house, the cottage in Wales. The return he had got was phenomenal – too good to be true, really, but he didn’t question it. He just bought more burgundy. When the margin calls came, thick and fast, he didn’t even recognise the names of the firms. His options had been bought and sold, bundled with other derivatives, then sold again. His debts had been sold too. At least, that’s what he’d been told. But it all went wrong. He’d lost everything and then some. How could that be?
He considered himself an intelligent man but he just didn’t understand what had happened. Yet he occupied a senior – well, senior middle-management – position in the agency whose precise role was to understand. He took another mouthful of delight, drained the Riedel glass and reached for a fresh one. This he would fill with a Grand Cru, he decided after some reflection.
The problem, the real problem, was that after the meltdown, after the catastrophe that had wiped him out financially, he’d been offered a one-time-only, ‘ask no questions, be told no lies’ opportunity to recoup his losses. A devil’s bargain, no doubt.
It took the very last drop from his cash account, but he had taken the view that if he was hung for a penny, might as well be a pound. There was something in there about sheep and lambs, too, but the burgundy was playing havoc with his metaphors. Anyway, he had taken the opportunity offered, thinking he couldn’t sink any lower. How wrong one could be. He drained his glass.
‘Jing cring we’ll all be rooned,’ he sang out, laughing.
‘Ludovic? What are you doing down there?’ a querulous voice called from above.
His laughter turned to tears. It wasn’t the money. It was love that had ruined him. His mother was right. He had aspired to punch above his weight. Now he was out for the count.
He put his glass down and tottered out of the cellar, up the stairs and down his classic Victorian black and white chequered tile hallway, past the open door to the dining room, where his wife was preparing to serve avocado-wrapped ceviche with tomato pearls.
‘Nestor! Where are you going?’ she asked, astonished.
‘To see a man about a fucking dog,’ he replied, and stumbled out into the night.
23
EARLY DRINKS AT The Prospect of Whitby had turned into lunch at The Gallows restaurant in The Captain Kidd. Fernley-Price had sensed a theme for the day, which he decided he might as well continue at his club.
There were plenty of pirates there, all avoiding each other for fear they’d bump into someone to whom they owed money, which could be anyone. In this climate, no one really knew who owed what to whom. The club was full of ’em, whey-faced, miserable City types crying into their Krug. They were all in the same boat, so what the hell.
One more drink and he would have another go at contacting that fat weasel for an update on their fortunes. He had to look forward, not back, keep his chin up and expect – no, demand – a positive return. After the sacrifices he’d made and the risks he’d taken he mustn’t show any sign of weakness now.
It hadn’t been Fernley-Price’s idea to move into the black economy, although if he ended up making a motza he would claim it had been. No one would be around to argue the toss on that score, or share in his triumph, which rather took all the fun out of it for a chap, now he thought about it. Perhaps he’d get two more drinks in and save the waiter a trip.
Three drinks later he decided that if the bastard wasn’t returning his calls, there was no point in ringing him. Sod it. He was ignoring calls himself, a dozen since lunch time, all from the same party. Sod that too. He would sort it later. But in the meantime he would go and
beard the lion in his den.
Staggering out of his club, Fernley-Price found a black cab conveniently waiting for the likes of him to pour himself into the back.
‘Poplar!’ he commanded.
Another City gent, thought the cab driver, who had just lost his savings to some fucking Viking bank. He accelerated sharply, throwing the drunken git to the floor.
The Silent Woman was quiet, even for her. Doyle sat at his usual table, alone, knocking back pints before driving out to deliver the bad news to Frank. Word had got around about Gina, and the atmosphere was respectful. He knew that some would say she was a grass who had got what was coming to her. But not in his earshot.
The police wouldn’t release the body. It was more than he could bear to think of his little girl lying on that cold slab in the mortuary, being poked about. They wouldn’t tell him how she died.
They were going to make him come back when the doctor was at the station to give blood and prove she was his. It wasn’t the last that would be spilt. He gestured for another pint.
The door swung open and Fernley-Price staggered in, clearly three sheets to the icy wind.
‘It’s cold enough to freeze the brass balls off a monkey!’ Fernley-Price announced loudly, leaving the pub door open behind him.
‘Shut the bleeding door, you pillock,’ cried the old man in the cloth cap, who had been sitting there since 1956. The belligerent scowl Fernley-Price turned on him vanished in the face of the sudden silence and the watchful, threatening postures of the other patrons. ‘Right you are, squire,’ he mumbled.
Doyle sighed as Fernley-Price caught sight of him.
The drunken sod kicked the door closed, stumbled over, slumped into the chair opposite and put his hands flat on the table to steady himself. ‘Mate, you haven’t been returning my calls,’ he said. He dragged out his mobile and waved it at Doyle, ignoring the flashing symbol which rebuked him for failing to respond to his own messages.
Doyle didn’t respond.
‘I said —’
‘I heard you,’ said Doyle.
‘Well it’s not friggin’ good enough,’ said Fernley-Price, apparently oblivious to Doyle’s mood. ‘We need to keep the channels of communication clear.’ He smacked the mobile down on the table. ‘How’s business?’
Doyle answered quietly. Fernley-Price leant forward to catch it, knocking the table and slopping Doyle’s pint.
‘What? Whadyasay?’
Without warning Doyle reached out and grasped Fernley-Price by the throat, squeezing his Adam’s apple between his thick thumb and two precisely placed fingers, so Fernley-Price couldn’t swallow or gasp for breath.
‘I said I’ve had a fucking death in the family!’
Eyes wide, Fernley-Price raised his hands in a gesture of mute surrender and Doyle released him. ‘Fine, I’m sorry, I had no idea, fine, of course, I’m so sorry. In your own good time, old chap. Do what you have to do and get back to me, whenever,’ Fernley-Price croaked, rubbing his throat.
Doyle stood up and put a hand on the banker’s trembling shoulder.
‘No hard feelings, mate. I’ve a lot on my mind.’
Fernley-Price nodded. As Doyle turned on his heel and walked out, the landlord leant over the bar and addressed the dazed Fernley-Price.
‘You’ll be settling Mr Doyle’s bill then, sir?’
The little contretemps with Fernley-howsyourfather had set Doyle up nicely to deal with Frank. He wasn’t going to take any shit. Frank would blame him for Gina’s death, like he blamed him for bloody everything. Nancy leaving, for example.
It shook Doyle to think that Nancy was out there somewhere and didn’t know about Gina. Unless Gina had found her since, or maybe Nance had kept in touch with Gina all along and they’d cooked up this business between them, grassing him up to get back at him.
He hadn’t told Frank about the surveillance because Frank would have blamed him for that, too. So he certainly wasn’t going to tell him the full story now, about the Agency and everything, then tell him Gina had grassed them up. Frank would just get abusive and start on about what a useless piece of baggage he was and how Gina would never have left home if it wasn’t for him. He wasn’t going to stand for it.
It was only ten miles from Poplar to Chigwell, but as he took the Green Man interchange Doyle thought, not for the first time, that it was like another bleeding country once you got through Leytonstone. At the next roundabout he took the exit onto Hollybush Hill. It even sounded like something out of Enid Blyton. He didn’t like it, all that open space, playing fields, horses even; it gave him the willies. Miles between fish and chip shops, and the curries were shite out here.
When he pulled up at the premises his courage almost deserted him. The place was in darkness. He sat in the car for a moment, listening to the engine tick as the cold seized it. He got out slowly.
Frank opened the door in his pyjamas and cardigan, a pair of fingerless gloves encasing his enormous hands.
‘I’m in the middle of one of my programmes.’
Doyle stepped past him into the hall. ‘Sorry to disrupt your viewing, Pop,’ he said.
Frank shut the front door and followed him down the hall into the kitchen.
‘Put the kettle on, Pop,’ said Doyle.
‘One of the customers acting up? I’ve told you before, come down hard and early.’
Doyle raised his hand. ‘It’s not the business. Sit down, Pop.’
He really wanted him to sit down so that he would have an advantage if Frank lashed out. Doyle had decided that if he did, he was going to give the old man a wallop. He wasn’t going to wear it. Not tonight of all nights.
Frank didn’t move to put the kettle on and didn’t sit down, just stared at Doyle, apparently confused by his tone.
‘Look, Pop, it’s Gina,’ Doyle said.
‘Who?’
‘Gina, my —’
‘I know who she is. What about her?’
Doyle’s heart was thumping in his chest.
‘She’s dead, Pop.’
‘What? No she’s not, she’s just run off, young girls are like that, flighty. What are you talking about?’
‘I was at the police station today, Frank. She’s grown up now. But she’s gone.’
Doyle shifted his feet slightly and planted them squarely, bracing himself for the onslaught.
Frank took a step forward, his fists working, clenching and unclenching at his sides. Doyle was ready.
‘No. She’s just a little girl.’ Frank seemed to be miles away, talking to himself. ‘How?’ he whispered.
‘Murdered.’
Frank fell on him, sobbing. Doyle was more shocked than if he’d thrown a left hook. He put his arms around Frank’s shoulders. He’s an old man now, he thought.
Father and son stood locked in an embrace, heads together, tears mingling.
24
DEMPSTER WAS AS good as his word. When Berlin got home she found someone had been around and replaced her front door, complete with a new deadlock. The locksmith’s card was tucked under the lintel. She took the card and walked to the shop in Roman Road. It was well after closing time but there was a twenty-four hour bell.
The locksmith came down from the flat above the shop. She held up the card and her ID and he ducked behind the counter, retrieved a key, opened the door and handed it to her.
‘Courtesy of the Metropolitan Police,’ he said with a grin. It was obviously lucrative work.
She thought the flat would be an absolute tip, but when she got inside she found the police search hadn’t left that much of a mess. Maybe Dempster had exercised a restraining hand, wary of alienating her while she could be useful to him.
She took one ampoule from the paper bag and put the rest back in the bread bin with some reverence, acutely aware of how precious they were now that she had come so close to losing them. A bread bin seemed a banal treasure chest, but it was intended for the staff of life.
Inserting the needle of the dispos
able syringe through the ampoule’s rubber seal, she drew up the colourless fluid inside. She could barely remember a time when she had had to cook it up, then force a dull hypodermic into collapsing veins. With Lazenby’s assistance she had gradually stabilised on a daily dose. His approach had been all about choice, control and risk management.
Without hesitating she pushed the needle into her thigh. It slowly released its exquisite chemistry. She wondered how she would cope if she had to return to the street, a world where death was an ever-present possibility. Serenely she reflected that it wasn’t so very different from this one.
It was the coldest night in London for forty years. Black ice sheeted the roads, pipes froze then cracked, the homeless crawled into Council grit boxes and suffocated. Rooms sealed against the air became tombs as faulty heaters stifled the occupants. The frigid silence claimed its victims. Seven million shivered in their beds.
Berlin, oblivious to the cold, walked through the deserted streets of the City. The heroin was near the end of its metabolic process and was about to exit her system, leaving only a ghost in her veins. She turned into Newgate. In the rose garden of Christ Church Greyfriars an old man, shrouded in newspaper, sought warmth from the earth, beneath which four queens were buried.
The ruin of the West Tower was all that stood of the original church, the empty Gothic perpendicular window framing not heaven, but the sheer glass face of an office building that loomed over it. Berlin heard the gentle sigh of a last breath exhaled. The queens claimed their own. The old man had lost his struggle, just as the poor of London had lost theirs for centuries. She kept walking, always trying to discern the direction that would lead her out of her own past.
The Fourth Day
25
NIGHT WAS STILL resisting day as Berlin arrived home, exhausted from her nocturnal wandering, longing for sleep. She struggled with the stiff new lock, cursing. The landing light had been smashed again and her fingers were frozen. She dropped the key as footsteps approached. A figure loomed out of the dark, one arm extended towards her. A black face was barely visible between a black beanie and black puffa jacket.
In Her Blood Page 7