The Amen Cadence

by J. J. Salkeld

  Pepper shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t sweat about it. Cons are usually pretty well-informed, when they need to be. We both know that.’

  ‘But how did they know about all that?’

  ‘Who knows? Who cares? I’d say that you’re whiter than white, but you’d probably grass me up to the thought-police if I did. So just forget it, eh? Now, you know where we’re going?’

  ‘Mrs. Hood’s place, isn’t it? But I thought she didn’t have anything useful to tell us?’

  ‘She didn’t. It’s Davey we’re going to see. He’s moved in, to keep an eye on her.’

  ‘Of course he has. I’d do just the same. Anyone would.’

  Pepper swung round in her seat to face Copeland.

  ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘I just said it’s obvious that he’d move in, after what happened.’

  ‘Shit. Yes, that’s it. That’s why Dai only smacked Mrs. Hood about a bit, and didn’t really hurt her. He wants Davey to move back in. That’s exactly what he wants, the bastard.’

  ‘So Young can get at him more easily, you mean?’

  ‘Aye, exactly.’

  ‘Are you going to tell Davey?’

  ‘Aye, of course. He needs to get himself and his mum away from here, and pronto.’

  Rex grunted assent, but didn’t bother replying. He hardly knew Davey Hood at all, but he did know that the likelihood of the bloke cutting and running were precisely the square root of bugger all.

  Davey Hood answered the door only seconds after they knocked, and didn’t bother to try to conceal the baseball bat leaning, handle upwards, behind the door.

  ‘Keep your voices down’, said Hood quietly, ‘mum’s having a kip upstairs.’ The two officers followed him into the living room. ‘Fancy a beer? I’ve laid some in. The strongest thing mum had in the house when I arrived was a bottle of cream sherry. I remember it from when I was a kid. Aye, that very bottle.’

  ‘Go on’, said Pepper, ‘a beer, thanks.’

  ‘How about you, mate?’

  ‘I’m driving. Have you got a soft drink?’

  ‘Aye, of course. Sit yourselves down, then.’

  The two officers sat, and the Smiths clock on the mantelpiece chimed slowly and solemnly. The furniture was old, dark and solid. And suddenly Pepper understood why Hood had needed to get so far away, into the sand, the sun, and the snipers, and far from all this suffocating safeness. Hood came back in carrying a floral print tray, and Pepper couldn’t help but laugh.

  ‘Have you got doilies too, mate?’

  ‘What? It’s practical, is this tray.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Hood passed them their drinks, and reached over and clinked bottles with Pepper before he sat down. He hadn’t bothered to offer her a glass, Copeland noticed.

  ‘Any progress to report, then?’

  ‘That’s what we’ve come to talk to you about; to give you an update’, said Pepper. ‘The intruder picked your mum’s locks, but as you know we’ve had them changed. No forensics I’m afraid, and just one witness, your neighbour across the road. She saw a man going in to the house, but she thought it was probably you.’

  ‘You don’t think…’

  ‘Of course not, don’t be daft. You’re not a suspect.’

  Copeland thought that Pepper seemed a good bit more certain on that point than he would have been. After all, Sandy’s examination of the locks had shown evidence of plenty of wear, but no obvious signs that the lock had been forced. So it had either been very skilfully picked, or the intruder had used a key. And Davey Hood had a key, didn’t he?

  ‘Has your mum been able to check for us?’ asked Pepper. ‘Was anything actually stolen?’

  ‘No, she was too tired to look. But I have, and her jewellery has gone, all of it. She had some lovely stuff too. And no contents insurance either, she says.’

  Pepper nodded, and smiled reassuringly. ‘We know all about that already, don’t worry. Anything else?’

  ‘No, nothing. So this bloke was a pro, was he? Just went straight for the good stuff, like.’

  ‘That’s one possibility, certainly. But we think that the offender might have waited for your mother. It’s possible that he wasn’t disturbed at all. You see what I’m saying, Davey?’

  Hood looked confused, but not for long. ‘What? Some bastard wanted to beat her up? He broke in, just to do that? But why? Christ, she’s a seventy year old widow. She doesn’t have an enemy in the world.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s right, Davey, but we can’t say quite the same about you, can we?’

  ‘Dai Young? That bastard had this done? I fucking knew it, right from the off.’

  ‘We think it’s possible that he did it himself, Davey.’

  Rex was going to say something, to explain that it was just a theory, but Pepper raised a hand to stop him.

  ‘It’s not certain, love, but what I can tell you is that Hood’s skill, back in the day, was picking locks. He was taught by a bent locksmith, see.’

  ‘The cowardly fucker. Too chicken to take me on man to man, is he?’

  ‘Of course he is. Look, Davey, the way I see it is this. You’re like us, you stick to the rules, the Geneva Convention or whatever it’s called. Just like we stick to the law. But Dai is like a terrorist. He doesn’t give a shit about any rules, and he’ll take you down any way he can. You hear what I’m saying?’

  ‘Aye, I hear you, love. Loud and fucking clear. But I know a thing or two about fighting terrorists, Pepper, and so do my mates.’

  Pepper put her drink down on the table.

  ‘But don’t you see, Davey, this is how he wants you to react? You’ve not got all the might of the British army behind you now, love. He’s the one with the manpower, the muscle, and the money.’

  Hood jumped up, and pointed at Pepper with the bottom of his bottle.

  ‘No, love, you’re wrong. His boys are a fucking shower. Stupid twats with no skills, and no discipline. They’re cowards too, the whole lot of them.’

  ‘Maybe, but he knows exactly where you are now. Where your mum is, too. Why not make a tactical retreat, yeah? Get yourself and your mum away, and leave Dai Young to us.’

  ‘And what will you do? Will you nick him for this?’

  ‘Not immediately, no, because we’ve got no evidence. But he’ll make a mistake, love. People like him always do.’

  ‘Too fucking right, Pepper. Because he already has. But listen, thanks for giving me a heads-up on this, like. I appreciate it. Good intel wins wars, and that’s a fact. Now, let’s relax and talk about something else, shall we?’

  But Pepper had no intention of changing the subject.

  ‘You know that you don’t get a free pass here, Davey? If you and your mates go all Rambo on us over this, we’ll nick you too. And don’t forget, Dai’s not as daft as he might seem. He’s got friends, informants, all over.’

  ‘Among the cops, you mean?’

  ‘Aye, I’m afraid so.’

  Hood sat down again, took a long drink from his bottle and put it down with heavy finality. He looked straight at Copeland when he spoke.

  ‘I see. Well, if you’re on Dai Young’s payroll you’re the world’s most brilliant bloody actress, Pepper, and I very much doubt that. And if it’s you, sunshine, then you really do need to understand something.’

  Copeland didn’t reply, and met Hood’s stare had on.

  ‘You need to understand that it’s terrorist rules all round from now on. Remember that, mate. It’s strictly terrorist rules, from here on in.’

  Wednesday, 17th June

  The Hood’s house, Carlisle, 7.26am

  As soon as Pepper and Copeland had left Davey Hood had made the call, and twenty minutes later his mate Josh had arrived. They’d taken four hour watches through the night, and there’d been no hostile activity.

  ‘You’re not under observation’, said Josh, when he returned from his morning run.

  ‘No reason I should be. Not by th
e law, anyway. I’m off in a minute, and I’ll see you later. Here, you take this.’

  Hood checked that the pistol’s safety was on, then handed it to Josh, who didn’t ask if it was real, since the thought had never even crossed his mind.

  ‘If you identify an intruder as hostile do what you need to do,’ said Hood. ‘There’s no silencer but the neighbour is as deaf as a post. Wouldn’t hear heavy artillery. And don’t call the cops after. We’ll deal with whatever’s happened when I get back. Just don’t shoot the bloody postman.’

  Josh grinned, slipped out the magazine, and checked that the chamber was empty. It was a conditioned response, as automatic as confirming that a target was hostile before doing anything that couldn’t be undone. He’d not shoot the postie, they both knew that.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be safer if we just moved your mum, mate? Somewhere properly defensible, at least.’

  ‘Nah, no way. They’d soon find us, one way or another. We could live off the grid, us and the lads, but not mum. This is all she knows. Her whole life is within a mile or two of right here. I’m not taking that away from her. Not now, not ever. Anyway, nothing will happen this morning, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Not that sure, though,’ said Josh, weighing the gun in his hand.

  For the first time since his mate had arrived Hood smiled.

  ‘You’re right. I’m not that bloody sure at all, buddy. So you stay super sharp, and don’t hesitate, if it comes to it, like.’

  Hood took his own advice, and watched the street from an upstairs window for fully five minutes before he left. It was still quiet, and other than a couple of dog walkers there was no-one about. Of course, if it had been him on an observation in this street at this moment then he wouldn’t have been spotted, not by anyone, so there was always a chance that he was being watched. He wasn’t seriously worried about that possibility however, because Dai Young was an amateur, and Davey Hood had learned his trade in the hardest school of all, where even one tiny mistake could mean lights out, permanently. Young had almost all of the strategic advantages, but tactically he was strictly a one move at a time man. Get hit, hit back. Rinse and repeat.

  And Davey Hood hadn’t been idle, in the weeks since Young’s men had burned out his business. For a start he and the lads had been watching Young and three of his key blokes. So now Hood knew his routine - and it was recklessly predictable - as well as plenty about the lives and lifestyles of his main men. Where they lived, even where their kids went to school. Terrorist rules, he thought, as he pulled away from the kerb. He’d never use them of course, and he knew that was another strategic weakness, but not so much if the other side didn’t know it as well. Not so much of a weakness then.

  He knew exactly where Young would be at that moment, and it was prefect. Wednesday morning would be a breakfast meeting with Bill Manson and Al Wallace, Young’s two key lieutenants, at the entirely legitimate light engineering business that Young owned in the industrial estate on the fringe of the city. Sure enough, only three cars were parked outside the small office building when Hood arrived, and he didn’t need to check against his list to know who they belonged to.

  He drove in, and reverse parked next to Young’s car. It was another warm day, going on clammy, and Hood was wearing a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops. He looked like he was just about to go on holiday, rather than into battle, and that was quite deliberate. He didn’t have even have a knife in his pocket, although, if it came to it, his keys would have much the same effect.

  The front door was already open, so he strolled in, past the empty reception desk. The three men were in the open office just ahead, and Young had his back to him. Hood knew that Wallace had done jail time, but Manson hadn’t, and it was Wallace who jumped up as Hood pushed open the door.

  ‘Let me take him, Dai,’ Wallace shouted, and ran hard at Hood, aiming a kick when he was only just close enough to land it.

  And Hood was smiling as he stood up, having checked Wallace’s pulse.

  ‘You need to get him some lessons, mate,’ he said to Young, ‘or he’ll really do himself a mischief one of these days. Don’t you fuckers ever learn?’

  ‘You’re a dead man’, said Manson, without moving from his seat.

  ‘Aye, quite possibly. But then aren’t we all? And that’s what I’ve dropped in to talk to you lads about, actually. You know about my old mum I expect, Mr. Manson?’

  Manson seemed so surprised to discover that Hood knew his name that he didn’t even nod in reply, so Davey carried on. ‘Well, your good mate Dai here broke into her house, waited for her, and then attacked her. Would you fucking believe that? She’s due a hip replacement, and it was pitch dark, so it wasn’t exactly what you’d call a fair fight, was it?’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Hasn’t he said owt to you about it? Really, Dai, you surprise me. But aye, he did it, all right.’

  Young had been smiling, right up until that moment.

  ‘Bollocks. Why would I do something like that?’

  ‘To get me where you could get at me. So you’d know where I’d be, when the time came for you to have a go at taking me out, like. Well, I can save you the trouble. Let’s sort this out, right here and now. Last man standing, all right? Actually, I mean last man breathing. And you feel free to join in, Mr. Manson. But if you do you’ll live or die by the same rules, all right?’

  There was a long silence. Manson’s face was white, and he showed no signs of following Wallace into the fray.

  ‘Go on, Dai,’ he said. ‘Have him. He’s fucking asking for it.’

  Young stood up, but he didn’t move towards Hood, who was still ten feet away.

  ‘No, Bill, not here, not now. I choose the where and the when. But I’ll have him, and it’ll be soon, don’t you worry. And he won’t fucking see it coming.’

  Hood took a couple of steps forward. ‘Really? Is that it? I thought you were a hard man, a fucking psycho. No fear of death, all that shit. But you’re actually chicken, aren’t you? And you’d go quick, mate, you’d barely feel it. It’s the best offer you’re going to get, I promise you. And I’ll tell you what, here’s a little sweetener. You get a free shot. Come on, you yellow bastard, I can’t say fairer than that.’

  ‘Have the bastard, Dai.’

  ‘That’s it, you listen to your mate. What’s stopping you?’

  ‘No, you don’t get to fucking choose when you die. I decide that. And you are a fucking dead man.’

  ‘You tell him, Dai.’

  Hood took another couple of steps, but towards Manson this time.

  ‘And that’s what you want, is it, Mr. Manson? You want me dead, do you?’

  ‘In the fucking ground, mate.’

  ‘And would you like to know what happens if I do die?’

  ‘Fuck all,’ said Manson, glancing at Young for approval. ‘The coppers will do nowt, believe me. Just another psycho ex squaddie who’s found dead. You’ll shoot yourself, I expect. Won’t he, Dai? Fucking top himself.’

  But Hood spoke again before Young could.

  ‘There are worse ways to go, believe me. And you will get to find that out, the hard way, if your all-mouth-and-trousers mate here does manage to off me. Because you’ll go, Mr. Manson, and so will your wife, your son and your daughter. Boating accident, I expect it’ll be. Aye, the Sheila-Ann, isn’t it? Tidy boat, that. But you see my mates are trained. So she’d go down, with all hands, like, and it would seem like an accident.’

  ‘Fuck off. You’ve told me about it now. So I’ll just sell the boat.’

  ‘Aye, you will. But that won’t stop my mates, because nothing will. You, everyone you love, they’ll all go. It’s just the price you’ll pay for the company you keep. And the same goes for all of Dai’s guys.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘I’m glad you asked.’ Hood thought for a moment, and rattled off half a dozen names. ‘They’ll all be held personally responsible.’

  Young tried not to look alarmed, but he
couldn’t quite manage it. ‘Shut up. You’re all fucking talk, mate. You and whose army will do all this? Because all I can see is you standing there.’

  And then Hood laughed, long and hard. It didn’t seem forced to Manson, but then it wasn’t.

  ‘Whose army? That’s priceless, mate. For fuck’s sake. How stupid are you? But I’ll tell you one thing for free, like. When I came out of the military I thought I had no skills that’d be any use on civvy street, just like lots of the other lads. But now it turns out that I do, and so do my mates. And don’t think the lads won’t keep coming after you if I’m gone, Mr. Manson, because they didn’t need any fucking officers to tell them to keep going when our mates got blown to bits over there. So we’ll not stop, because of a fucking bully like Dai Young. So you just remember that, Mr. Manson, and tell your colleagues and all. It would be rude not to, like.’ He turned back towards Young. ‘Now, Dai, are we doing this, or what? One of us hasn’t got all fucking day.’

  This time Manson didn’t say a word.

  ‘No?’ said Hood. ‘Then they were right about you, Dai. You’re nothing but a sadistic bully with no balls. A fucking coward. You’re the reason that the world still needs people like me and my mates. And I tell you what, mate, sometimes it’s pretty sweet to feel needed.’

  Hood turned and walked slowly back towards the door, and he smiled at the surprised looking receptionist as he passed. ‘Bloke in there needs a sweet cup of tea, love. He’s not quite feeling himself. You can’t miss him. He’s lying on the ground, like.’

  DC Henry Armstrong was already back at work, and he’d taken the jokes as they were meant. Just a working copper’s way of showing concern and sympathy, delivered by means of saying exactly the opposite. But he was glad to be in with Pepper in the DI’s office now, going through an impending court case. They both had a brew in front of them, made by Pepper for once, and everything felt safe, and normal, but still slightly unreal. As if something fundamental in his personal universe had shifted, ever so slightly, but for ever.